


something to call mine

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Baking, Christmas, Domestic Fluff, Infidelity, Insecurity, M/M, McLennon Big Bang 2020, Songwriting, it all comes back to paris yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26679226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: In December 1963, The Beatles appear on a Christmas cooking show. John and Paul like the domesticity of it a little more than they thought they might.--Written for the 2020 McLennon Big Bang. Based on Paul McCharmley's art.art: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25052467
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 17
Kudos: 74





	something to call mine

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't done a Big Bang in a seriously long time. It was quite a challenge for me, but I got paired with a great artist with amazing pieces. 
> 
> I really hope you like this!
> 
> Disclaimer: I made it all up, none of this timing makes any historical sense. It's fine. Just roll with it.

**December, 1963**

Paul loses his bassline when John looks at him on stage in Portsmouth, and he realizes that that’s never happened before. On an endless list of shows with John endlessly looking at him from over a microphone -- in Liverpool, Hamburg, all of England -- it’s  _ never _ happened before. 

There’s something in the pit of his stomach, something exciting and familiar in a way that he knows he’s only felt once before in his life. It’s that swirling, giddy feeling that John had put into him at the base of the Eiffel Tower almost two years ago. He thinks that if he shuts his eyes, he could bring himself back to Paris. With John’s voice in his ear, that tingling feeling back under his skin, he could be back in Paris. 

He catches back up to the music and sees that John is still looking at him, smiling coyly, one of the very few people who would realize that Paul had made a mistake. He raises his eyebrows, still singing into the microphone, and gives Paul a pointed look, that makes George laugh. 

He grounds himself into the music, listens to it as though he weren’t a part of it, and he feels this moment as if he were watching it, rather than living it. Things go quiet and still around him and he realizes where he is: on a stage with John Lennon, being paid to sing their songs. He realizes it’s a miracle: that he and John have lived simultaneously, that they’ve found their person, and have decided to love one another at the same time. 

There’s graciousness filling him up entirely. It’s in his head and in his heart and it follows him all the way back to their hotel room. With a few drinks in his belly, Paul realizes he likes the way gratitude feels on him. He rolls onto his side, shifts as close to the edge of the bed as he can, and he peers at John through the dull lamplight between them. John’s got his glasses on, his nose in a book, to help him fall asleep. Paul watches his chest rise and fall, slowly and steadily, he watches his fingers across the pages as he turns them over, and he realizes that it’s daft to want to tell him. 

Because what would he say?  _ Thank you for being around, thank you for bringing me here, thank you for picking me. _ He knows it would come out all wrong. 

John must feel his eyes on him, because he turns his head, and looks over the thick black rims of his glasses, then he smiles. “What?” he asks playfully. Going pink and feeling embarrassed, Paul just shrugs, shirking away from the edge of the bed to look a little less keen. John closes the book and twists a little more at the middle. He tears his glasses off his face and sets them down on the nightstand. “That was a good show, wasn’t it?”

“I think so,” Paul offers. 

“I bet it sounded fabulous,” John continues. Then, he pauses. Serious isn’t the word, but maybe sincere is. “It was fun to play,” he says and Paul thinks that it must mean more than what those words strung together indicate. It’s a ‘thank you’ like Paul’s silent one. It’s simultaneously not enough and more than what Paul could have ever asked for. 

“Yeah,” Paul manages. 

John must know that Paul’s caught his warmth because he offers another shy smile before returning his attention to his book. Except, he hasn’t put his glasses back on, so Paul knows he isn’t actually reading, and that feeling from the base of the Eiffel Tower comes back with such full force that it makes Paul smile before he can stop it. He rolls onto his back and tugs the blankets up closer to his chin, ready to hide that smile if John decides to poke fun at it. Except, he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes on a book he can’t see. 

Paul wonders what he must be thinking about. 

\--

Over breakfast, Brian tells them that they’ve got a Christmas television appearance booked next week. 

“You’ll play a few songs,” he tells them. “Then, they’ll do a quick baking segment --”

He tries to say it quickly, but it isn’t quick enough, because George asks: “A  _ what _ segment?”

Brian sighs, turns to George, searching somewhere for sympathy, then he looks to John. “It’s Christmas, they want to do something a little more festive than just a rock concert.”

“Festive baking,” John says. “My favourite.” Brian tsks, then his eyes find Paul’s and Paul knows he’s meant to convince them all that it isn’t as stupid as it sounds. But before Paul can say anything, John tacks on: “We’ll give the kids what they want, Bri,” lazily smoking a cigarette. That raises Brian’s eyebrows, hell, it doesn the same to Paul. So, John just shrugs. “We’ll play house,” he says casually. “Might be kind of nice.”

John’s true to his word: he makes playing house  _ kind of nice _ . 

Paul thinks that John ought to be laughing at themselves; he ought to be poking holes in this stupid appearance idea, he ought to have never let Brian allow it to get this far. But he’s here, in plainclothes, an apron tied around his waist, hands clasped behind his back, grinning madly during rehearsals. He watches their host with keen eyes as she mixes the ingredients for cookie dough together.

She glances up at where the cameras will be when they’re filming, lets the audience know what they’re doing, then she beckons John next to her, and he does as he’s told. Paul watches him knead his hands into the dough, laughing at just how horribly inexperienced he is. 

She laughs at him, bats at his arm and asks: “Have you ever done something like this before, John?”

“You’re mad if you think my Auntie would allow me anywhere near the kitchen,” he tells her and she laughs in a way that makes Paul’s chest hurt. She  _ laughs _ and doesn’t even think about why he’s said Auntie and not mother; she doesn’t know the first thing about him, but she’s beaming with him. 

He watches John scratch at his nose, leaving a streak of flour there; Paul notices it’s there before their host does. His hands feel heavy with how much he wants to reach across her, brush his fingers across John’s face and clean it away. She glances up at John, then double-takes when she notices the flour. She goes pink with it. She reaches up to touch him and Paul sees the way John melts slightly into the touch, the way he always does with something soft and gentle. 

She giggles, then Paul feels her eyes on him. She reaches out and tugs at the lapel of his jacket. “Paul,” she says playfully. “Paul, bring us those cookie cutters, please.”

Putting a smile on for what the cameras will eventually see, Paul gathers the metal cutters. He steals a glance up at George as he does, who rolls his eyes at him. There’s a hint of a smile on his face, as there always should be when you’re baking cookies. Christmas cookies, no less. But Paul can tell George can’t believe they’re doing this just as much as Paul can’t. 

“Of course, love,” Paul says to her, his voice like silk, much-practiced and tested-true. It looks like it might make her blush slightly, so Paul glances to John to make sure he’s seen his handiwork, except he doesn’t look put-out by Paul stealing away her attention, he just looks like he’s surprised to have been let so close to Paul while he’s speaking that way. 

It makes Paul feel warm underneath his suit jacket; that John might be imagining what it would be like if Paul ever spoke to him like that. Would he melt into it just like he did soft hands?

“Ey,” John says, suddenly able to pull himself out of it. It’s jarring, to see how quickly he can change. It makes Paul feel exhausted and excited at the same time. There’s something mischievous in his smile, it’s something Paul knows well. “Will you pass us the sugar too, sweetheart,” he says, playing up just how domestic this whole thing seems. John bats his eyelashes and it’s forward enough in its obviousness that it makes the people around them laugh. Paul thinks they must not see it for what it is: they must not see how warm it’s made them both feel. 

“Anything for you, dear,” Paul answers and hands him the sugar bowl. 

“Thank you, sweet husband,” John says languidly, allowing their hands to brush up against one another longer than he might if there really were cameras on them. They let their eyes rest on one another a moment too long too. It makes John smile, Paul can see it. It makes him blush, so Paul taps his arse playfully before he settles back in his spot next to George. 

Paul suddenly wishes that he and John were alone. He knows he wishes for it a lot, but right now, it feels so urgent. If he closes his eyes, he could imagine the two of them in Paris, alone in that dinky hotel room, knocking up against one another in the wash closet because it simply wasn’t meant for two. He imagines them again up in his old bedroom on Forthlin Road, as close there as they had allowed themselves to be in Paris, only a pair of guitars keeping them apart, even though there was a whole room of space around them. 

_ Sweet husband _ … Paul would never be that to John, but he knows he’d never be just a friend, either. Something had changed in Paris two years earlier. They’d kissed one another and John had gone soft beneath Paul’s touch and it changed the course of everything. It made them both softer for one another; a secret gentleness that nobody else was allowed to see. 

He suddenly realizes he doesn’t have a word for what he’d call him and John. That’s why it worked with their guitars. They didn’t have to say anything, they didn’t have to call a spade and spade. They could just listen to one another and feel what the other was passing to them. Paul suddenly wishes that John was holding a guitar in front of him. He wonders what John might be passing to him. 

The host shows John where to press the cookie cutters, then she passes two each to Paul, George and Ringo, and they’re able to press their own cookies too. The dough falls away from the metal and then they’re placed into an oven. 

“Right,” the host tells them, smiling. “We’ll have a batch ready for us when we’re filming, and we’ll just show them off after a commercial break.” She raises her eyebrows at them, still smiling. “But I think we’ve got it covered, lads.” She scans each of them, then pauses on John, their natural leader. 

“Right, great,” he says. “I could use a smoke,” he adds, looking to Paul. Paul nods in response. 

“Cor,” George mumbles as they spill out into the back alley of the studio. “I’ll never bake another cookie in my life.”

“It’s not that bad, son,” Rich chastises. He shakes two cigarettes out, one for himself and one for George. He even leans close to the young guitarist, a lit match between them. George rubs his hands together in the cold as he sucks on the cigarette to make sure it’s lit. Ringo shakes the flame out, then tears off another from the matchbook for John, who only shakes his head at him, already shielding his lighter from the blustering wind. A puff of smoke framing his face. Paul watches it dissipate across John’s jaw and cheek bones. It makes him notice the way John’s cheeks have gone rosy in the cold. 

Then, John glances at him and there’s something of a smile on his face. 

“You out again, Macca?” John asks after a drag or two, and Paul realizes he hasn’t even pulled his cigarette case from his pocket. He’d been caught looking, admiring. He feels the lads watching him and feels slightly embarrassed, so he just shrugs, going along with it. Before he can even lie and say ‘yes’, John hands him a fresh cigarette. His full cigarette case burns a hole in his pocket. 

“Ta,” Paul mumbles when he realizes he still hasn’t said anything in response. It makes John smile at him and Paul’s glad for it. 

“So, this is it then, lads,” John says, mostly to George, because he’s the only one that needs any convincing. “It’s going to be cooking shows and Christmas records for us for the rest of our lives.”

George rolls his eyes, but there’s a grin on his face. There were a few things about making it big that were difficult and annoying, but it only meant one thing: they were making it big. And George could feel it, same as everyone else. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, hides that grin somewhere behind the collar of his coat. 

“Oh, aye,” George mumbles. “Should be fun.” Rings gives him a playful nudge and that’s enough; George’s grin finally breaks into a wide smile.

They’re pulled into their dressing room as soon as they step back into the film studio. Paul doesn’t understand why because they’re left there alone almost immediately. Paul itches for his guitar. All this filming business, it was a lot of hurry-up and wait, it makes him feel restless in a way that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to, no matter how many more television appearances they may do in their lifetimes. 

John must be feeling the same way, because he suddenly stands, and paces the dressing room, looking for something to entertain himself with. He picks through the make-up brushes left out by the artists, a few of their hair products, but none of it seems to capture his attention for any more than a second. He opens up a cupboard. Paul can’t see what’s inside of it, but whatever it is, makes John smile with something giddy. He steps closer to the shelves inside, disappearing behind the opened cupboard door for just a moment. 

Then, he slams the cupboard shut loudly, in hopes that it will make everyone look at him. And it does. Immediately, Ringo snorts at him.

“Bloody hell,” George mutters. 

Paul looks up at him and feels himself freeze. John’s looking right at him, wearing a dark brown wig that goes halfway down his back. There’s a purple bow at the crown of his head. He tosses the long hair off his shoulder and flutters his eyelashes and Paul has to smile. He has to smile, otherwise he’ll be too shy and have to look away, and that seems like it would be more incriminating. 

“You’re not gonna tell me I’m pretty?” John asks petulantly when Paul doesn’t say anything.

“Come off it,” Paul mumbles, and his voice has gone too soft. It’s gone too sweet. He’s afraid that everyone will see how shy he’s gone. Without skipping a beat, John approaches him, hiding something behind his back. He creeps towards Paul and stands behind him. Paul watches his reflection in the mirror in front of them. “What are you doing?” Paul asks. John shrugs innocently. “What have you got behind your back?”

“Nothing,” John answers. 

“You have,” Paul counters. 

John rolls his eyes, then reveals his new toy. Just as John brings it up to sit on top of Paul’s head, Paul realizes that it’s a wedding veil. He feels himself go pink and hot. His hands shoot up towards it, trying to bat it from John’s hand, but John won’t let him. He giggles to himself and Paul just  _ knows _ , this won’t end until he just lets John run his own course. Then, Paul feels John’s hands in his hair and he’s suddenly glad that he’s allowed this to happen. He inexpertly tucks it into his hair until it seems like it will hold. 

John looks up at their reflection and there’s a smile on his face. Paul watches him throw a glance towards George and Rings and he must see that they’re no longer watching them, too used to John’s antics to care much. Then, John smiles, something small and shy, and his hand brushes lightly across the nape of Paul’s neck, and it makes Paul’s skin tingle. 

They hold there, smiles on their faces, looking at one another, wearing things that should be ridiculous, but they just don’t feel that way. They don’t feel ridiculous and they don’t feel surrounded by people who might judge them, strangers who might walk in at any moment. Then, John blinks, and he must realize he’s allowed the moment to lose all its humour, because he goes a bit pink with it. 

“You shouldn’t wear white, Macca,” he finally tells him. “You’re not even a virgin.”

Paul gasps, feigning indignance, because he  _ knows _ John’s seen him in Hamburg. White would never be meant for any of them. “A man can fake it for his wedding day, can’t he?” A smile tugs at the corner of John’s lips, then he looks down at the toes of his boots, nodding shyly. He gently tugs the veil out of Paul’s hair, keeping it delicate and careful. 

He tucks it back into the cupboard, even pulls the wig off his own head; Paul watches the long hair cascade down his back, then the way John shakes out his own fringe to put it back in place. He glances towards Paul, catches him looking and it makes him smile. Before Paul can really blush, the door to the dressing room blows open and Paul thinks he ought to look away. He doesn’t know what might be written on his face, but it doesn’t feel like something that is safe for strangers. Make-up artists and hair stylists, chatting eagerly amongst one another, each find their places behind various chairs and mirrors. 

A man points to Paul and directs him into the right chair. He does the same for the others and it becomes about what it’s always about: flirting with whichever make-up artist you get. They’ve got to get their practice in somewhere. 

\--

With the lights to blind them and cameras on them, Paul feels pretty confident that John won’t try any funny business, so he’s surprised, when John ducks behind him to reach for something on the opposite end of the table, and he puts his hand on Paul’s waist casually to keep himself balanced. Paul feels himself go still, steals a glance up at where the cameras are and gladly realizes that the way that they’re touching is hidden behind the cooking countertop. He’s glad for it, but it also makes him go hot in a way he hadn’t been expecting. 

He glances down at John’s hand, then up to John’s eyes, and for the most part, John hasn’t even  _ realized _ what he’s done and that thought goes straight to the base of Paul’s stomach. Without even a thought, John had touched him as if they belonged to one another, and it makes Paul think of Paris. The night that they’d spent together there, in bed, because they were too drunk to climb out of it. Paul had never been touched by a man in that way before John: something strong and possessive, while still remaining so kind and doting. 

They’d kissed for what had felt like hours, but could have maybe only been a few minutes. John kept his hand just where he had it now, and Paul had never actually told him: he liked it when he did. 

John’s smiling eagerly for the cameras when he finally glances up at Paul, still oblivious to the way he’s made him feel, but then that smile falters, and for a moment, Paul thinks he’ll pull his hand away as though he’s been burned, but he doesn’t. Paul watches him realize what he’s done and he watches him experiment and see how far Paul will let him take it. He presses him palm deeper against him, his whole hand making it around his hip bone easily and Paul forgets how to breathe. John does too, and Paul realizes that he’s in Paris too. They’re on television, but they’re in Paris. 

He must mean to, it happens almost instinctively, but Paul’s eyes flicker down towards John’s lips, and that must be enough because it makes John go warm and glow. He looks away because he has to, then he peels his hand away from Paul even though it’s the last thing that he wants. And then he’s gone, leaving that space behind Paul cool, leaving the skin at his waist tingling for more. 

He wants to say something, something revealing, just meant for the two of them. He wants to say something the way he  _ hadn’t _ wanted to say anything in Paris. He thinks that if he says something it might mean that they could have not just kissed that next night in Paris, but the one after it too, and the one after that, and all the nights leading up to this one. 

He realizes  _ just _ how often he’s wanted to kiss John and for the first time, he doesn’t have to wonder if John would want to kiss him back. 

He glances at George next to him, who’s still putting the work in on the cookie dough; he hasn't noticed the thing between he and John, or at least, he’s pretending he hasn’t. 

Somehow, he finishes baking. Somehow, he smiles for the camera and pretends that nothing’s happened. But he doesn’t dare look at John, not unless he has to. 

They’re let off set and John draws into him like a magnet; before anyone can ask where they’re going, John drags him down the back hallway, towards their dressing room. Paul feels John mean to take his hand, but he stops himself. It must still feel too risky. They’re both burning with the opportunity to hide themselves behind a closed door. Paul feels himself go giddy as John pushes him inside and he realizes the room is empty, just as they’d hoped. Paul pauses, turns, and watches John close the door behind them, slowly and deliberately. It takes everything Paul’s got to not rush him immediately, push him up against that thin balsa. He wants John to make the first move. He wants him to prove that this isn’t just something Paul’s imagining. 

John steps forward, his eyes all over Paul’s chest, down his arms to his hands, then back up to his eyes and lips, everything. John wants everything for himself. Something of a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips and Paul realizes that they’ll both make each other wait forever if that’s the sort of game that they want to play. But Paul doesn’t want to play. He wants John back just as fervently. 

So, Paul decides he doesn’t need John to move first, he doesn’t  _ want _ John to move first. He wants this to be his choice, his own action on some deep desire he’s had since he was nineteen years old. He wants to turn John into something soft and malleable, not the other way around. And he knows the only way to make John go soft is to be soft in return. He’d seen it in rehearsals, he’s seen it with Cynthia. And most importantly, he’s seen the sort of power his own hands have over him. 

He realizes that, since the day they met in Woolton, he’s always known that John could make him do anything. If he made him laugh hard enough, if he embarrassed him enough into it, John could make him knick anything, go anywhere, say  _ anything _ to  _ anyone _ . But he could do the same to John, too. Nobody would believe him, but nobody could see John here now, watching him carefully but still smiling, his eyes doubtlessly saying:  _ I’ll follow you _ . And he would too, whatever Paul did, he would follow him, no matter who believed it, or who didn’t. 

He reaches out and hitches his hand to John’s hip, just the way John had done to him earlier. He itches with how much he wishes John would reach out and do the same. He glances down at his own hand, loves the way it seems to fit just right and sees John do the same. He’s looking, and he rolls his hip away from Paul’s touch, making Paul follow him. It’s a deliberate thing that pulls Paul towards him, so Paul knows John will know what he means when he says: “What was that, hey?” John shrugs, then he does exactly what Paul hoped he would. He grabs hold of Paul’s hips and pulls them nearly flush up against one another. 

“You might have to be a bit more specific, Paulie,” he says, but he squeezes at Paul’s waist so Paul  _ knows _ that they’re on the same page.

Paul rolls his eyes and allows himself to look away and he immediately knows that it’s a mistake. He allows himself to look John square in the chest and the room falls out around him. Suddenly, they’re no longer in a dressing room in London; they’re back in Paris again and it’s John’s birthday. They’d been a bottle of champagne each deep, but Paul thinks he’ll always remember the way John’s hands felt against his body. He feels nineteen all over again: alone in a new city with John next to him. On the cusp of something that finally felt more important than music. 

“What’s this, then?” Paul asks, placing his hand overtop of John’s, pressing it deeper against his body.

John smiles, tells him: “You did it to me first,” and Paul suddenly wonders if it had been him that had made the first move in France. John always does that to him: makes him wonder. It’s always double-meaning; yes, he was meant to take that remark literally -- Paul had  _ literally _ put his hand to John’s waist first as soon as they stepped into the dressing room -- but there was always space for further reflection with John. What else could he have missed simply because he hadn’t reflected on it?

He takes a deep breath, swears he tastes champagne on his lips, and thinks, maybe it had been him to kiss John first. The night had gone somewhat foggy in the smaller details. Maybe it had been him, because he wants to move first now. He wants to kiss John like they’ve had years of it, like there are days and days spent in a kitchen baking cookies for Christmas behind them. He wants to kiss John and smile through it; he wants John to smile through it too.

“Have you always been this bloody cheeky?” Paul asks, rolling his eyes.

“I think so,” John answers and he juts his nose out towards Paul’s, brushing the angled bridges of their noses together, like it’s meant to be a kiss without being one. “But you’d know, I suppose.” Paul smiles and thinks, yep, it was him that had moved first. It had been him and would always be him. John would tiptoe around him, only go so far as would still allow him to pull away without feeling foolish or rejected.

They’d pretended to forget their night in Paris, but it had always been one of Paul’s fondest memories; a night where he felt more intune with himself and whatever power it is that makes the world go around. The decision has been made before he even realizes it: whatever happens next will end in a kiss.

“You’re letting me have final say?” Paul asks. John smiles, something crooked and coy and he shrugs, so before he can say anything smart, Paul kisses him to keep him quiet. It’s the only thing he knows that works. Paul had kissed him in Paris and John hadn’t opened his mouth for hours. Paul had kissed him and kissed him and kissed him to keep him from saying that kissing one another was something that he could regret. With their lips pressed together, Paul feels John sigh into his mouth and he suddenly wonders that, even if he’d allowed John the chance to speak in France, would he have ever dreamed of saying he regretted it? 

They pull away and John’s slightly out of breath. They pull away and Paul sees John follow him, just for a second, before realizing who he is, and who he’s standing in front of. Paul sees him go red with it, so he tugs on the collar of John’s shirt and kisses him again, but he makes sure it feels different, like it says everything without saying anything at all. He suddenly wishes that they didn’t have so much to prove when they kissed one another. Every kiss -- this one, and the ones they shared in France -- carried the weight of the whole world with it. Maybe when they were older, they would understand how to carry that weight with them every day, make it lighter so that they didn’t have to kiss one another only when it felt too heavy not to. 

It’s John who pulls away this time and Paul thinks that this is just how it would always be: John had wanted this, he’d pushed Paul into a corner to make the first move, then he’d pull away. 

“What’s that for, Macca?” John asks and his voice is softer than Paul had expected it to be. “It isn’t even my birthday.”

It’s a joke, Paul knows it’s a joke, John’s giving it everything he has to mean it as a joke, but still: his voice is softer than Paul expected it to be. It’s soft in a way only John can be when he isn’t trying to be something tough. 

“I’m only meant to kiss you on your birthday?”

John shrugs, offers something of a smile as he says: “I thought that was the deal.”

“The deal?” Paul asks. “What deal?” he adds before he realizes that there are conversations that have happened between them that Paul hadn’t even been a part of. By not saying anything at all, John had built a narrative around what happened between them in Paris. Paul supposes he had too. For months, he’d thought John simply didn’t remember, or that it had been some insignificant experience amongst bohemian friends; Paul knew about the string of painters and poets and musicians who had been in and out of Gambier Terrace while John was there with Stuart, and the exis after them in Hamburg. Consciously or unconsciously, John had always gravitated towards the people who wouldn’t keep him confined to some small-headed heterosexual box. As untrue, or far-fetched as that narrative may have been, Paul had created it anyway, same as John had created this idea that Paul had kissed him out of some sort of gifted pity, given only one day a year when he had to be gifted  _ something. _

He means to say:  _ I’d kiss you whenever you asked me to _ , but he only gets so far as: “I’d kiss you --” before someone pushes through the door of their dressing room and steps inside. John’s moved away from him with the practiced art of having done this before. He moves so quickly that he’s gone before Paul can even process that it’s just George and Rich coming to see them, coming to stand in front of a mirror and muss up their hair so they don’t feel so prim-for-television.

“So, was it as terrible as you thought it’d be, son?” Ringo asks George as they sidle up side-by-side, staring down their own reflections. 

Pulling a cookie seemingly-out-of-nowhere, George takes a bite of it and allows: “You know, we’re quite good at this, actually. I reckon we could have a go of it with baking.”

“They’d have to have the London Fire Brigade on stand-by if you ever decided to go for it,” John drawls, falling into tandem with them quicker than Paul can. He sets himself next to Ringo and tugs his tie looser, expertly subtle, so nobody catches how crooked Paul had made it. 

\--

John’s the only one who makes the trip back to Liverpool from London that night. It isn’t so late that he can justify missing a night with Cyn and baby Julian. The rest of them pack back into their shared flat downtown. Paul still can’t quite believe that this is what being successful is like: living out of a shoebox with four other blokes and their girlfriends, making the long trips from Liverpool to London far more frequently than he ever had to when they’d been a small Northern group. It was better and worse all at once. He supposes he should consider himself lucky: John made that long trip north far more than any of them. It had to be exhausting. 

Alone in his room, Paul pictures John alone in the back of a car, the weather caught somewhere between rain and English slush and he wonders if John might be picturing him here, as well. There had always been something between them: some connection. It was something so tangible and powerful that, when Paul thought of John, he often wondered if John had somehow put that thought in his head. The four of them lived inside one another pockets, but John and Paul existed somewhere between the others’ eyes. 

It had been that way almost since the day they met. Something had changed when they wrote together. Something broken had been re-forged. And it had only been made stronger when Julia was killed. They’d used one another like diaries; John had said things that Paul swore that he’d thought verbatim while they buried his own mother. It had been strange, awe-inspiring, even frightening, to come to learn that there was someone who could live inside of you, someone who’d been there all along, even before you’d met them. So frightening that sometimes it felt like the only way through it was to hold John close, love him in every way love means: write with him, sing with him, hug him, touch him, kiss him. 

And they’d finally done that in Paris; they’d  _ finally _ kissed one another. 

Paul goes to bed still thinking of the way that John’s lips against his had felt. He’d only been nineteen at the time, but something wise in his stomach told him that this was something he might not find again with another human being. It felt spiritual in a way Paul had never found in the cathedrals. It had changed the course of everything, and they’d never spoken about it. For months, it had made Paul wonder if it had been something that only he found holy. He’d been terrified that it had been just another kiss. Another, in a long line of drunken mistakes for John Lennon. 

They didn’t talk about it. Paris, France was all but wiped off the face of the planet. It was a fantasy place that no longer existed because they’d stopped giving it a name. But still, Paul had felt Paris around them tonight in their dressing room. When John touched him in that soft way only John could, he’d turned into a Parisian. 

Paul rolls onto his back in bed, stares up at the plaster tracery weaving its way wall-to-wall. It’s such a London touch that Paul suddenly misses the way home feels. He shuts his eyes and tries to imagine himself back in his bedroom on Forthlin Road. He tries to remember the old noises of his home: the way the floorboards would creak in the nighttime, his father’s steady breathing verging on a snore, the groan of his bedsprings whenever John would sit down on its edge with his guitar in his lap. 

Paul thinks that the way France had popped up around them in their dressing room must jog his memory. Flat on his back, thinking of Forthlin Road, Paul suddenly remembers a moment where they’d dared mention Paris.

“I miss it, you know,” John had told him, after they’d finished a horrible rendition of  _ La Vie En Rose _ on their guitars as a lark. Paul remembers him holding his breath, making John say it. “I miss Paris,” he’d finally amended. “Or, maybe,” he started again, his voice small and afraid that anyone but Paul might hear him. “Maybe I just miss being away.” He shrugged helplessly; Paul watched him decide to push forward: “I think about what it would be like to leave everything behind. You know, the band, my family.” They were due back in Hamburg in two weeks; Paul had wondered if that would be far enough away. “I dunno,” John mumbles. “Start over. Do it right next time.”

“Leave everything behind?” Paul had asked, though he’d known all along exactly what John had meant. It hit too close; he could still remember being fifteen years old, newly motherless and wanting another chance at something happy, something normal. It hit too close, so Paul had made a joke of it. “What, even me?” he’d asked, feigning some sort of soft offense.

But John hadn’t treated it like a joke. Paul remembers: his sincerity made him feel skittish, like he was being told something he was never meant to hear. “No,” John had told him without a lick of humour. “Not you, Macca.  _ With you _ , I suppose.” He’d laughed then, but it wasn’t something funny. It had frightened Paul. They’d decided to erase Paris off the map. Why was John looking at him as though they were in France? “Leave it all behind  _ with you _ .”

“That’s what the band is for me,” Paul had said, and he’d i _ gnored _ it. He’d seen the way that struck John and he’d  _ ignored _ it. “Leaving it all behind.”

There’s something resigned in the way John’s shoulders had dropped. “So, you wouldn’t--...” He hadn’t wanted to give up, but the vulnerability of finishing off that question became too much. John had looked away, gone a little more stoic and Paul had watched himself lose him. 

“What?” Paul asked. 

“Well, we could just go back, that’s all,” John had mumbled, deciding he’s come this far, he might as well say it, but it no longer packed the same softness. 

“To Paris?”

Hearing that name must have breathed a little more life into him, because John had sat up a little straighter, told Paul: “Yeah,” and waited for an answer.

“No, we couldn’t,” Paul had said almost immediately, not allowing the question the sort of weight it deserved. It was too much: Paris was a place that didn’t even exist, how was it somewhere that they could go back to? “Have you seen our schedule, mate?”

“Paul --”

“Take another look and show me when we have time,” Paul added with a laugh, then he’d turned back to his guitar. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he was begging John to let it go. He couldn’t talk about this anymore; he could hardly sit still with the prospect of John wanting to kiss him.

“Right,” John muttered, and it was nowhere near the fight Paul might have expected of him.

“Maybe for your birthday again this year,” Paul had told him, and the memory makes him sit up in bed. 

He pictures John, alone in the back of a car, and wishes he was here right now, so Paul could tell him that he hadn’t meant it the way John had taken it. He’d just  _ said it _ , without thinking. He suddenly thinks of the narrative that he’d created around them: the one where John kissed any and all of his bohemian friends as a drunken joke and realizes it had really had no basis in reality, but John’s did. John’s narrative about pity and gifts, they’d come from a real place, no matter how insecure that place might be. 

He suddenly wishes the trip from London to Liverpool wasn’t so long; he wants to call John, speak to him now, but he can’t. So, he closes his eyes, sees John’s face there, still alone in the back of a car and tells him:  _ it was never pity. It was never a consolation. It was everything. _

\--

If Paul never saw another batch of cookie dough in his life, he’d be quite alright. As soon as he’d arrived back in Liverpool, he’d been passed along a message from his Auntie Jin about the McCartney family’s Christmas cookie exchange and how, being twenty-one this year, he was expected to have his own batch to include. He’d thought about ringing up Jane, asking her if she’d like to help him, but he knew full-well she was too busy to make the trip up to Liverpool just to help him with some cooking. She’d probably turn him down even if she hadn’t been busy, telling him that he should probably learn to do it on his own, anyway. And she’d be right to say it. And Paul might not have been so bitter about it if he hadn’t  _ just _ spent a whole day kneading his fingers into cookie dough on camera. 

As he shoves his first batch into the oven, there’s a knock at the door. It gives Paul pause these days; you never know who might be able to guess that he’s in town. His Dad even told him that sometimes they don’t even guess: they just knock on the door in hopes that it’ll be Paul who answers. It was becoming a bit of a hassle, Jim McCartney had made that perfectly clear. So, Paul had resolved that his first big purchase would be a new place for his Dad and Mikey, one with a gate and a little more privacy. Something like Mendips. 

Subtly, Paul tugs the curtain over the windows away from the pane, and it’s John there, speak of the devil, speaking of Mendips. He can feel the way the smile on his face makes his cheeks ache even before he opens the door for his friend.

He pulls the door wide open, John smiles at him, then the smell of cookies wafts out at him from the kitchen. His smile falters, then he asks: “Are you baking?”

Paul rolls his eyes, reaches out for John’s sleeve and tugs him inside. He shuts the door behind them both and the smell of cookies becomes undeniable inside the small war-time home. “You  _ are _ baking,” John accuses as he heads straight for the kitchen. “You practicing for our next gig, Macca?”

“Shove off,” Paul mutters, then he kneels down in front of the oven to see how far along his first batch has come. They haven’t browned or risen yet, but that’s to be expected. They do smell fantastic though. John joins him, crouching down in front of the small window on the front of the oven. It makes Paul feel like a little kid and he can’t stop smiling about it. 

“Not bad, not bad,” John allows, and it’s almost too sincere so Paul suddenly has the urge to explain them away. 

“It’s a Christmas thing,” he says. “My family always does this, everybody bakes something and we bring ‘em ‘round to my Auntie’s and we’ll all just have loads of biscuits to give each other.” He shrugs uneasily because the differences in the way they must spend their holidays looms over them and the way John’s looking at him makes him feel a bit sad. 

John must think he feels sorry for him because he scoffs, stands himself up straight, smoothing out the knees of his trousers. Paul stands with him, an apology he knows he shouldn’t verbalize somewhere down his throat. “They’ve got you baking for it now, then?” John asks. “You’re still just a kid.”

Paul feels himself bristle, the way he imagines he always will when John brings up their age difference. “I’m twenty-one,” Paul defends. “I can vote,” he adds, and that makes John start to smile. Paul’s glad for it. “I can be married. Even sign a proper contract. I think I can manage a few biscuits.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to vote,” John tells him as he heads towards the kitchen table to sit himself down. “So I wouldn’t trust your biscuits either.” He suddenly takes a look around the kitchen, feigning offence. “You haven’t even offered your guest any tea, and I’m meant to believe you’re a grown man?”

“Guest,” Paul scoffs, though he does suddenly remember his manners and heads towards the kettle. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

“It isn’t about invitation, it’s simply about arrival,” John defends.

“Oh, aye,” Paul allows. 

Once the kettle is on the boil, Paul turns towards John, leaning back against the edge of the counter. He crosses his arms over his chest, keeps his eyes down on John, still seated at the table. There’s an easy companionable silence between them that Paul considers himself lucky to have found. He imagines there aren’t many people that John Lennon is quiet with. 

Paul suddenly remembers the way they’d sat quiet with one another in Paris. Over espresso in the mornings, at whatever cafe on the side of a bustling Parisian street. He remembers how that soft quietness had changed the morning after they’d kissed one another. They’d kept quiet, but there’d been something harsh about it. And Paul suddenly realizes that how quiet they’d been afterward had hurt them. It had hurt John. And he realizes that John always talks first, with anyone else, John always talks first. But they’d always found something different in one another. Maybe it was Paul’s turn to talk first -- maybe it was his  _ job _ to do so. 

“I’m glad you came, actually,” Paul decides to say. He must sound nervous because John tenses up in front of him. They watch one another. They’d be sizing one another up, needling out who might make the first move, if Paul hadn’t already made up his mind about it. “I wanted to talk to you about the other night,” he says, and he sees John’s cheeks blush. He immediately starts to fidget in his seat, desperately searching for an excuse to stand up, to get the hell outta there, but Paul won’t let him. “When we kissed,” he says and that finally gives John pause. 

“There isn’t much to talk about,” John mutters, but he only says that sort of thing when he knows there is. 

“Do you really think I’d only do that when I felt like I had to give you something?” Paul asks. 

John furrows his brow a moment, then must remember what he’d allowed himself to say that night in the dressing room. He goes slightly pink with it, knowing full-well he’s let Paul know that he’d hurt him, even when he hadn’t wanted to. “The birthday thing?” he asks dismissively. “Christ, Macca, it was a joke.”

“Because it’s not true,” Paul says, barely allowing John to finish. 

He watches John wire his mouth shut, sees something that looks too much like hope cross his face. It’s everything, all the years they’ve spent with one another, the things they’ve told one another, Paul can see it all on John’s face, and he suddenly doesn’t understand how anyone could look at John Lennon and not see something sensitive. 

The kettle starts to whistle at them both and Paul’s glad for the distraction. He turns back towards the stove, lifts the kettle off the burner and grabs for two tea cups. “I don’t like that I’ve made you feel that way,” he says, into the steam rising from the teapot as he pours the hot water inside. He watches the colour of the tea leaves stretch through the water, gives it one stir, then shuts the pot to let it steep. He realizes he has nothing left to do with his hands, he has to turn around, and John still hasn’t said anything. He holds his breath, gives it one more moment, and then finally hears John’s voice behind him.

“So,” he says. His voice is clipped; Paul can hear the way his head is running a mile a minute. “You’re saying you wouldn’t just do it when you thought I needed you to?”

It’s taken years to get here, Paul realizes. It’s taken years of believing he never deserved anything simply because he is who he is. There was always a reason, some ulterior motive, to be receiving love. And it could never be so simple as: he deserved it. 

“Yes,” Paul allows. “That’s what I’m saying to you, John.”

Not caring if the tea is steeped or not, Paul pours some into a cup each and turns back to John, who looks as though he might not believe him. He sets a cup down in front of John and wonders what it might take. What could he say to convince him that this was the truth? He realizes that there’s something about John, something that needs to be looked after, so he decides to be careful. He’ll figure out what the right thing to say is, and until then, he’d keep quiet.

John sips at his tea, then his eyes find something over Paul’s shoulder. There’s a smile somewhere on his face. “What’s all that?” he asks, jutting his chin forward. 

Paul twists in his seat to see what he means: the second batch of cookies; well, at least the ingredients for it. Paul turns back to him and smiles warmly. He pictures the two of them, back in that film studio, underneath those spotlights. He feels John’s hand at his waist again and thinks that there’d been something so homely, something so domestic about the whole thing and it makes Paul want to do it again -- it makes John want to do it again, too. It feels a little special to be doing it in a home like Forthlin, a place where they’ve both allowed one another to see each other more deeply, more genuinely than they’ve ever allowed anyone else. 

“I’ve still got another batch to go,” Paul tells him. He smiles. John does too, and that makes Paul smile wider. “You wanna help me with it?”

John shrugs, but Paul doesn’t miss the way he’s blushing. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“Do I get to come to the biscuit exchange?”

Paul laughs, something big and genuine. “You hate the ‘McCartney clan’,” Paul teases, throwing John’s  _ fond _ words back to him. John chuckles to himself ruefully; he has to admit that that’s certainly something he’s said. “You know you could if you properly wanted to,” Paul decides to tell him, because underneath everything, truth will always be the most important thing between the two of them. 

John nods, but he says: “I’ll already be in too many places at once for Christmas -- with Mimi and Cyn, and I’m sure Brian’s got us a few appearances too.”

Paul nods, allowing that to be true. “Yeah, probably,” he says, then he lifts himself out of his chair and heads towards the counter. He lifts the rolling pin he’d been using, still covered in flour, and holds it out to John. “You’ll still help though, won’t you?”

John smiles, standing too. He takes the rolling pin from Paul, inspects it (like it’s only his second time using one, and it probably is), then he sets his tea down on the counter, leaning forward just enough that Paul can feel the way their proximity makes his skin tingle. “Oh, aye, of course I will,” he says, then bangs the rolling pin down on the counter, feigning total ignorance about what the thing is meant to be used for. “Though I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” he says. “I’m quite hopeless in the kitchen, you see.”

“You’ll manage,” Paul tells him. He sidesteps John and gathers a few of the mixing bowls. John settles himself closer to the countertop. “I’ll be right behind you, anyway,” Paul tells him, setting the bowls down in front of them, hitching his hip against the small of John’s back.

“Oh,” John says, stepping forward, setting his hips flush against the edge of the counter. He glances over his shoulder, where Paul’s implied he’ll be:  _ behind him _ . When Paul slots himself there, he hears John mutter: “cheeky.” 

John reaches out for the mixing bowl and a few eggs; before he can get too far, Paul sets his hand on John’s waist, just the way that John had done to him. He feels John go tense beneath his touch, but it only takes a moment of  _ not moving _ , of proving that Paul’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing for John to melt into the touch. He lets Paul stay there; he lets himself enjoy it. 

Smiling to himself, Paul squeezes his hand around John’s hip bone, once and purposeful, then he pulls away and heads for the cupboard. He can feel John’s eyes on him as he pulls out two aprons. When John sees what Paul’s got in his hands, his cheeks go a bit pink. His eyes stay both low and on Paul at the same time as Paul returns to him. They stand in front of one another a moment. Paul fights the impulse telling him that this is bloody stupid; instead, he lifts the apron up over John’s head and sets the loop around his neck, allowing his hands to brush up against John’s hair. 

He sets the front of it right against John’s chest, then reaches around him to tie it up in a knot. They’re impossibly close, and John isn’t pushing him away. That isn’t lost on either of them. Even before Paul’s got John’s apron tied at the back, John gently takes the second apron from him and lifts it over Paul’s head, allowing themselves to mirror one another. 

The kitchen smells of freshly baked cookies, their hands brush up against each other, and John’s smiling at him. Paul thinks he could live in this moment forever. A new Paris to be had in the kitchen of his own childhood home. 

\--

Paul can’t believe that he’s known John for more than six years now, but he still feels giddy when they have good moments together. He’d fallen asleep thinking of themselves at the countertop, Paul’s hand on John’s waist. He wakes up thinking of the same thing. 

He puts on a pot of tea for the three of them -- Dad and Mikey will be up soon, too. Then, he goes to the phone and rings for John. It’s Cynthia who answers and it makes Paul’s heart jump into his throat. Though, checking his watch, he shouldn’t be so surprised that John isn’t up yet to do it himself. 

“Hiya, Cyn,” Paul says, recovering quickly. “Where’s the fella? He still sleeping?”

“Yes,” she tells him; her voice comes out as an exasperated sigh. There’s something distracting her. Julian, probably. Paul can hear her moving about, gathering a few things. She sounds busy. Paul swallows hard, meaning to stay on-course. “He’s got a few more hours left in him,” she adds, meaning to sound breezy, but Paul can tell that something she’d once found endearing has become a grievance. 

“You sound like you’re on your way out,” he observes. “Do you mind leaving the door open? I’m going to pop in, we’ve got to get another song out.”

“Yeah, sure,” she mutters, though their work is the last thing on her mind. “You won’t be long, will you? I don’t like to leave it open longer than an hour. We’ve been getting visitors,” she tells him and it makes Paul think of his father. Seems as though the fans were a bother to everyone but them. 

“I’ll leave right now, if you’d like,” Paul says. He hears Cyn breathe out a sigh of relief, so he decides to make things even easier for you. “Anything you need done ‘round the house? I could kill some time while I’m waiting for Sleeping Beauty to join me.” It makes her laugh, so Paul laughs with her. It suddenly goes easy. 

“No, no,” she tells him, but there’s a smile on her face, Paul can hear it. “I won’t put you to work. Just come ‘round now, that’ll be enough.”

“Alright,” Paul tells her, suddenly wishing that he could have caught her and the baby on their way out. Jools was still mostly just a bundle of blankets at eight months old, but he’d taken to smiling and laughing a few months back and Paul always liked to make him do it. “Turrah, Cyn,” he says. “We’ll grab a coffee sometime.”

“Right,” she says, though they both know full-well that they won’t; not without John. “Goodbye, Paul.”

Jim McCartney is up and in the kitchen after Paul hangs up the phone. He’s taken to the tea, finishing up what Paul had forgotten before he’d made his phone call. “Morning, Dad,” Paul says, batting his father’s hands away. 

“Who was that you were on the phone with?” Jim asks. 

Paul shrugs. “John’s wife,” he says and his father shakes his head at him. 

Again, Paul can’t believe that he’s known John for more than six years now and the mention of his name in this house still starts a fight. They might have gotten over it if Paul’s 21st birthday hadn’t gone the way it had. Jim was beginning to respect John: he’d married Cynthia, looked after their baby, but then he’d gone and ruined it and started a fight like some rogue teenager. It even makes Paul shake his head. John hadn’t started a fight: he’d  _ beaten the shit _ out of someone.

“It’d take a saint,” Jim mutters, and he means it’d take a saint to marry John Lennon. 

“Come off it,” Paul says back, knowing this could become something it doesn’t need to. “He’s not so bad.”

“Right --”

“You hardly know him,” Paul tries. 

“I know enough,” Jim counters, and it’s the tone of a father, and that’s enough to make Paul shut his mouth. He  _ hates _ that it makes him shut his mouth. 

“He’s doing just fine for a delinquent, then,” Paul answers, but it hasn’t got much muscle to it. The fight’s over; in fact, it had never really been much of a fight at all. Jim McCartney was right, after all these years, he would be proved right. And Paul would realize that eventually.

There’s a note waiting for him at John’s in Cyn’s handwriting. It says:  _ Hello, Paul! You’re a doll! Don’t rouse him, he’s in a sour enough mood as it is. _ It makes Paul smile. It shouldn’t, but it does. 

He quietly takes the stairs up to where he knows John’s bedroom is. There’s a pile of blankets in the middle of the bed. A swatch of auburn hair up by the pillows is the only sign of some life underneath. Paul sits down on the edge of the mattress, pulling John’s weight towards him. He must have been woken up a few times already because he immediately starts to grumble.

“Sour, indeed,” Paul observes and he sees the way his own voice gives John pause. It stirs something inside of him, that something so simple can have such a drastic effect on his friend. John rolls towards him, blearily opens his eyes as though he can’t quite believe it. 

There’s a moment where something passes between them, something sweet and contented, and it makes Paul wonder if this was something that John could get used to: waking up to one another. Then, John turns on a wry smile. “You’ve taken to watching me sleep now, have you, Macca?”

“Oh, shove off,” Paul answers, nudging John’s shoulder playfully. 

“What are you doing here?” John asks, pulling himself up into a sitting position. The blankets pool down around his middle and Paul watches him rub at some sleep in his eyes. There’s something warm inside of him; the same thing that had been there during that television appearance and yesterday at Forthlin. “We haven’t got work,” John adds. 

Paul realizes that there’s something about the way that they are together in these moments that warms him. Something that always makes him feel as though he were at home: loved and comfortable, safe and immovable. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to put words to it; he doesn’t even think he wants to. He just wants to exist inside of it for as long as he can. 

Still sleepy, John smiles up at him, bemused by Paul’s lack of answer. He can see him thinking. It comes too close to Paul realizing that John knows  _ what _ he’s thinking about. He finds he has to look away. He offers a simple shrug instead; it will have to do. “I wanted to write a song,” he allows. 

That makes John sit up a little straighter. “Have you got one going?”

Paul shrugs again. He feels like he has, but no words have come out of him yet. It’s strange. He feels as though his whole life were a song; he fell asleep feeling that way and woke up  _ still _ feeling that way. But he can’t seem to write it all down. He can’t seem to trap it and put it into something real and tangible, something he can feel in his throat, at his own fingertips. “There’s something cooking, but I need your help getting it out.”

John nods, lifts himself out of bed like a good soldier and even without tea or coffee, he sits down at the piano downstairs, leaving enough room on the bench for Paul to join him. Still in his sleep clothes, he tells Paul: “Let’s get to work.”

\--

They call it  _ I Want to Hold Your Hand _ and when they bring it into the studio, a hush falls over the large room at EMI. Leaning against the piano, George Martin listens carefully, not meaning to give himself away, like George and Ringo have. They’re both grinning madly, both eager to find their parts in the song. It was catchy as all hell, different from the things they’ve already done: something more polished and professional. As they sang, their voices finding the harmonies they’d practiced with one another at John’s piano, they could feel themselves taking another step upward. 

And the next step up was undeniable: America. 

When the song’s finished, Paul looks up at George Martin, who runs a hand through his hair, considers it all a moment, then he glances to George and Rings and their smiles must be infectious, because he begins to grin too. He points down to John and Paul, letting that grin go wider and wider. “That goes out at Christmas.”

“You think it’s something?” John asks. 

George smiles coyly and tells them: “It’s a record that goes out at Christmas,” he repeats, but they all know what that means: kids away from school, heavier promotion, gifts. A late-year release date could always take you a long way. Maybe even across the Atlantic. 

Nobody quite knows what to say after they’ve finished, when they’ve been allowed to go to down to the canteen for their last smoke break. They all want to hear what they’ve just finished, but it’s so precious a thing that even George Martin won’t let them listen until it’s to a standard of mixing the song deserves. 

“I’m buzzing,” Paul finally decides to say, because he’d rather say it than sit with it. Next to him, John sips at a coke and looks as though he wishes there were something stronger mixed inside of it. He looks ready to celebrate. “We should go out,” Paul offers.

“I’ve got to head back up north,” Ringo tells him. 

“Are you serious?” Paul demands. 

“Me too,” George says, shrugging with disappointment. “It’s Mum’s birthday tomorrow, I’ve got to be back for it.”

“And in one piece, I suppose,” John adds. He grins when Paul looks to him, then he sets down his bottle of Coke, giving it all a slow treatment, building up his own answer to Paul’s question. The way he’s got his eyes on Paul has already given him the answer, though. Paul grins back; a mad night in London with John sounds like the perfect way to cap off the evening. 

“Cor, why’d you have to bring in that song the day before me Mum’s birthday?” George suddenly continues. He tosses a spoon into the sink, the clattering of metal on metal acting as some sort of exclamation point. He shakes his head, but can’t help the smile on his face. None of them can, even still, after the song’s been recorded. He crosses his arms over his chest, then his grin goes a little more conspiratorial. “I’ve never seen George so excited about something you scruffs have brought into him.”

John laughs and it makes Paul feel warm in his middle. “He’s struck gold, son,” John tells the group, and Paul realizes that he likes it when John is so sure, so confident. He likes it when that confidence comes from somewhere real and deep down. It isn’t a cover. It’s the sort of confidence of a man taken seriously when he knows he deserves to be taken so. 

“You think it’ll do something in the States?” Ringo finally asks the looming question. 

There’s a moment where they all collectively hold their breath. George and Ringo glance to John, so Paul takes their cue and finds that John is looking directly up at him. Eyes wide and vulnerable in a way that excites him. Something passes between them: a life, a flight to New York City, their song on American radio. John starts to smile wider, so Paul does too. 

“Tell me I’m wrong, Macca,” John says, and Paul realizes that he’s just seen New York too. 

“I reckon it might,” Paul allows because it feels safer to be modest than it does to be hopeful. But it doesn’t matter what’s safer. There’s hope in the room, it’s all around them, undeniable, young and fresh, and more powerful than anything they’ve ever allowed themselves to feel. Paul sees Ringo reach out for George and he gives him a good shake, which then turns into a bear hug. George just hugs back because nobody seems to know what to do with their hands.

Paul looks back to John and realizes that hope is an expression that he’s seen on John’s face before. Somewhere in Paris, where they’d kissed one another. 

\--

The night begins just as it’s meant to. John gets their first round and they down their first few pints quickly. But slowly, Paul starts to watch John’s excitement begin to turn into something else. So, he grabs onto John’s sleeve and drags him to the bar, giving him a shake, hoping to pull a smile back out of him. 

“You need something stronger than a pint, love,” Paul tells him when John begins to make a noise in protest. Leaning right over the mahogany bar, Paul orders them each a shot of Irish whiskey. The glasses are put in front of them and John looks keen to drink it in a way that doesn’t make Paul feel happy. 

“To…” Paul starts, holding his glass up, waiting for John to mirror him. “Well, to  _ I Want to Hold Your Hand _ , I suppose,” he finishes. He clinks his glass against John’s, throws it back, before he can even process the way it had made John’s smile falter slightly. For a moment, his eyes go a mile away, then he tries to pull it all back together as if nothing’s happened. 

“To  _ I want to Hold Your Hand _ ,” he repeats. 

Paul sets the empty glass down on the bar with a clatter, then claps his hand to the back of John’s shoulder blades. “Don’t go sour on me, we’ve had a good night!”

John squirms away from his touch slightly and Paul knows it’s only because he’s had a few drinks, but he feels that hurt him, somewhere deep down in his stomach. “I’m not going anything,” John tells him flatly because they both know he has. John drops his glass down on the bar as well, it tips over onto its side and he makes no moves to set it right. “I’m tired,” he says cryptically and Paul knows he’s meant to follow John out the door. 

It’s colder than Paul remembers it being. He hugs his jacket closer to his chest and watches John shove his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, his shoulders hunching forward. If he wasn’t in slacks and a sleek wool coat, Paul would think he looked like a ted all over again. The attitude was certainly back.

They only get halfway down the street before Paul can’t take the silence between them. 

“Have I said something wrong?” he asks, prompting John to glance at him, then back down at the toes of his boots. John just shrugs helplessly. “Because if I have, I’d rather you just told me so I don’t have to dance around it like a bloody landmine --”

“The song, Paul,” John answers, rolling his eyes. 

“What about it?” Paul demands. 

“It’s just a song,” John answers and Paul feels as though he’s just hit him. All sort of joy and hope leaves him, and John’s never been the person to suck those things out of him --  _ never _ . Why should he start now? “It’s just a song and we’ve barely just recorded it. We don’t know what it’ll do for us. No use planning a life around it.”

“Nobody’s planning a life,” Paul says with an bemused scoff, and he knows he shouldn’t laugh -- by the look on John’s face, he knows he shouldn’t laugh. “It’s a  _ good _ song, I’m allowed to be excited aren’t I?” Paul asks. John just shrugs again, so, fearing John might clam up on him, Paul tacks on: “Besides, you said you thought it could take us to America, same as me.” He glances down at his watch on his wrist. “Three bleeding hours ago, you said that, John. What is this?” 

Except he knows exactly what this is. He’s seen a lot of things on John Lennon’s face, insecurity perhaps the most of all. 

John shakes his head, and still, Paul’s afraid he’ll shut him out, so he grabs at his sleeve and tugs at it. He just wants him to say  _ anything _ . Even if it turned out to be the wrong thing, he’d rather fight with John than fall into that strange silence they sometimes did when things turned wrong. John shakes his head again, means to turn away from him, means to look down the street in the opposite direction, just so he doesn’t have to look Paul McCartney in the face. So, Paul doesn’t let him. He tightens his grip on John’s sleeve and tugs him closer, keeping his eyes on what’s most important. Knowing he’s got nowhere to go, John actually relents. It makes Paul breathe out a sigh of relief. But then it's: “So what, aye?” John’s voice is telling him nothing matters. “So what if it gets us to America?”

“What are you saying?” Paul asks, because America’s always been  _ everything _ . So what? So: America means you’ve made it. America means people care what you have to say. America means you’re good enough. America means you’re actually worth something. Everything John’s ever wanted, America means all of it. 

“It’s the best song we’ve ever written, yeah?” John asks. He steps towards Paul, but Paul doesn’t back down. They’re close enough now that they hardly need to raise their voices. John’s going soft in front of him and Paul realizes that John needs to say this quietly, just to Paul, where no one can hear him.

“Yeah. And?” Paul asks sharply. Seeing John go quiet doesn’t mean he’ll let him get away with this. 

“And what if it gets us to America and that’s all we do?” John asks. He wires his mouth shut, lets his eyes fall down to cobblestones at their feet. He shrugs again, but there’s nothing defensive about it. It’s something afraid of being hopeful, something willing to just settle for something in the middle. It’s as much  _ John _ as it  _ isn’t John _ . “What if it’s just always the best thing we ever write?”

Paul thinks of himself, still relatively newly twenty-one years old, and John not much older at twenty-three and can’t believe that there’s a reality where this, now, fighting on a street corner with John Lennon is the best version of himself, at anything. He realizes that there’s still so much left inside of him and he knows it’s inside John as well. His heart had gone full when he picked up a guitar, impossibly fuller when he’d met John in Woolton. It would take a lifetime of songs to empty it out. There would always be songs between them.

Paul sighs heavily, lets his shoulders droop significantly, hoping that that makes John feel as defeated as he does. “You don’t honestly believe that,” Paul tells him, and between any other two people, that might sound like a question, but between them, it’s a statement. A fact that John would soon realize, Paul would make him. 

John sighs too. He looks down, somewhere in the middle of Paul’s chest, then he nods minutely. If he doesn’t believe it now, he must realize that Paul can believe it enough for the both of them. “Can we get somewhere warm?” he suddenly asks. “I’m losing feeling in me hands,” he says, offers a wry smile that doesn’t make Paul smile back. “That can’t be good for my guitar-playing.”

It isn’t much -- it isn’t a win for either of them, but Paul knows that they’re over the worst of it. They’ve diverted whatever explosion could have come from this. Now, it would just sizzle for the rest of the evening, or until John decided to put it out entirely. 

Paul shakes his head, steps in the direction of their flat and hears John’s boots shuffling against the cobblestones behind him. When he knows John is close enough to hear him, he mutters: “You’re unbelievable,” and he swears he hears Lennon laugh.

It takes a moment for Paul to find his keys in his pocket. His hands have gone numb in the cold, and there’s something still brimming inside of him, a fight of some kind meaning to distract him. 

“Maybe,” he hears John stammer as Paul keys them inside. He realizes it’s the first word they’ve said to one another on the rest of their walk home. Paul glances up at him and it makes John lose his nerve. “I don’t know, never mind.”

“No,” Paul tells him, pushing the door open and letting them both inside. “Maybe what?” he asks, shutting the door on London, shutting the door on the cold, and he hopes that’s enough to make John open up to him. 

John pauses where he is, fingers still around the top button of his coat. Paul watches him take a deep breath and plunge into it. Paul slips out of his own coat as John tells him: “Maybe I’m more afraid of never really  _ saying _ anything with my songs.” Paul turns away from him to hang his jacket up on the coat rack.

“Like what?” he asks into the leathers and wools. 

“I dunno,” John mumbles. “Something important,” he says, and it makes Paul freeze where he is. He keeps his eyes on the zipper of one of George’s jackets and just keeps there. Because he’s  _ too angry _ . He sees himself that morning that they’d written the song, feeling love brimming everywhere, feeling alive in a way he knew only John could make him feel. There had been words and sounds inside of him, some swirling joyful thing and John had helped him put it to melody, put it to words. Wasn’t something like that important? They weren’t saving the world, their lyrics weren’t rocket science, but the love they had for one another, for music, was real and calming, and it had always made a difference to Paul. No matter if it didn’t change the world around them, it had changed Paul deeply, in a way he could never explain. 

“Something important,” he repeats back, trying desperately to keep his voice even. 

“My truth, or whatever,” John says, and his voice cracks somewhere in the middle. It’s something above a whisper, something stronger and more purposeful, but still too precious to be spoken loudly. Paul realizes just how deliberately he’s spoken. Turning towards him, Paul realizes that he’s meant to understand something from this. This is how John was: he left a trail of clues, tip-toeing around the thing he actually meant to say, hoping you’d find it yourself and he’d never have to put it to words. 

Paul’s too tired for it, he’s too drunk for it. He realizes he’s read it wrong when he says: “You don’t have to put the truth on record,” and John shakes his head at him. Determined to get it right, Paul reaches out for the top button of John’s coat and unbuckles it because clearly John’s forgotten. He hears John sigh when he goes for the second. “The truth is in the music, anyway. Maybe you don’t always have to  _ say _ it. Maybe it’s just there and the people that matter see it anyway.” Paul watches John’s eyes flicker up towards him. He realizes he’s seen hope on John Lennon’s face more in the last three days than he ever has. He pushes John’s coat off his shoulders, takes it from him before it drops to the floor, and turns to hang it up next to his own. “Besides,” he says. “You  _ live _ your truth, John.”

“No, I don’t,” John says to the back of his head and it’s the sadness of it that gives Paul pause. John’s sadness, but his own too, because he realizes that there must be things about John that he doesn’t know about. He realizes he’s shared everything -- he’s shown him everything in music, in the mutual losses of their mothers, in the kisses they shared in Paris and again in that dressing room in London. He’s shown John  _ everything _ and he suddenly wonders just how much John’s shown him in return. “I don’t show people I love them,” he adds, and not for the first time, Paul wonders if he’s read it all wrong. “I don’t tell them. But that’s the truth of it: I love them anyway.”

“You think people don’t know that?” Paul asks, turning back to him. He can’t remember what his life had been like before he’d learned the way that John loving him made him feel. 

“I  _ want _ to tell them,” John says as though he’d hardly even heard him, and Paul wires his mouth shut. He knows the oncoming of a deluge when he sees one. And John’s got just enough whiskey in him to let go completely. “But I’m afraid that I’ll tell them, and then they’ll be gone, and it won’t matter either way.” Paul thinks of Julia and Stuart, and Uncle George, the first loss, the beginning of a lifelong cycle of grief where Paul hadn’t even existed to him yet, hadn’t even been able to help him. Paul feels himself shake his head at the thing forming in his throat. “So, if I can’t  _ live _ my truth, as you say,” John tells him. “Then, I want to put it in my songs. I don’t want to sing about holding hands, or --...” He shakes his head at his own inability to find words. Paul realizes he must be simultaneously annoyed and glad that he’s as drunk as he is. “I want to sing about loving someone properly. And I want people to hear it.” Something goes tough and serious inside of him and Paul suddenly sees John, bravely on a soapbox, begging people to hear him and anyone else like him, to hear him and understand him. “And I want it to move them,” he says sincerely. “Because sometimes, it’s a love that they don’t understand, and --...” Paul thinks of Stuart again. Brian, too. Then, he realizes he has to add himself to that list now too. John shakes his head; he looks up at Paul and Paul realizes he’s begging for Paul to understand him too. After all these years, he still feels as though he has to ask. “And I just think, if it moves them, they might not always…”

“What?” Paul asks softly, when he realizes that John’s trailing off means he’s finished, but Paul wants to hear it. He wants to hear it for Brian and for John and for himself. He realizes he’s always seen Brian as something different than him, and they were, but Paul realizes, as little as he’d ever allowed himself to dwell on it, he’d grown up in a place and time that hated him for what he did with John in Paris. 

“I don’t know,” John finally manages. He brushes by Paul and Paul can feel the heat of the blush on his cheeks. He follows John deeper into the flat; he’s said more than he wanted to. He’s said more than he needed to, Paul didn’t plan to push him any further, he just didn’t want him to be alone. 

He finds him in the wash closet, squeezing some toothpaste onto his brush. Paul pauses in the doorway and watches him carefully. “John --” he starts quietly. 

“I just want to go to bed, Macca,” John tells him, keeping his eyes on his own reflection in the mirror. Paul realizes he’s embarrassed and he hates that he is. There isn’t anything he wants more than to reach out and touch John, but he knows it wouldn’t be welcome. He nods, then leaves him be. He goes to his own room, changes into some sleep clothes and he realizes he can’t hear John rummaging around in the wash closet, he can’t hear him stumbling into his own bedroom. The flat suddenly feels impossibly large -- too still and quiet, and if Paul wondered if it might eat him alive, he knew John must be feeling the same way. 

Barefoot, he quietly pads towards John’s bedroom. He’s glad to find that there’s still light pouring out into the hallway. He pushes the door open a little wider and finds John with his back to him, slipping into an undershirt. He turns towards his bed, catches Paul in the doorway and pauses. “Do you need something?” he asks, still embarrassed, but gentle about it in a way that Paul hadn’t been expecting. 

“It’s quiet when it’s just the two of us,” he observes. He feels John take him in a little more closely and it makes him feel too seen. He chews at his bottom lip nervously and realizes just why John tip-toes around what he wants so much. It was too stark and vulnerable to ask to be close to someone. 

Then, John smiles and Paul’s relief tears through him. “You wanna sleep over, Paulie?” he teases. 

Feeling suddenly easy, Paul steps into the room, grinning. “Shut up,” he mutters.

He takes John’s lead, lets him climb into the side he prefers and then Paul takes what’s left. Once John decides they’re both comfortable, he rolls towards his nightstand and shuts the lamp off. They’re plunged into darkness and something about it makes it all feel more real. Paul lays flat on his back, feels the way John’s weight shifts next to him as he rolls over from one side to the other. They’ve done this loads of times, even since their night in Paris, but it feels different. It feels as though John had come dangerously close to putting a name to the thing between them, to the sort of men they were. Paul realizes he isn’t ready to hear it, he wonders if John had realized that too and spared him of it. 

“This is quite nice,” John suddenly tells him through the darkness of his bedroom. 

Paul smiles and asks: “What?”

“It’s all quite domestic, isn’t it?” John teases and Paul feels himself blush. He’s glad to be covered in darkness. He hums in response and feels John edge a little closer. “We’ve been baking together, you’ve been waking me up in the morning --”

“Come off it,” Paul says to him through a laugh. He gives John a soft punch to the shoulder and it makes John laugh too. Paul’s glad for it. They’d gone a bit heavy, he’s always happy to see John willing to smile with him again. John edges closer still and it makes something in Paul’s chest flutter. His eyes flicker downward, leaving John to look at his eyelashes. 

He senses John hesitate in front of him and knows that if he doesn’t say anything else, if he doesn’t look back up at John, he’ll ruin everything, but there’s something holding him back. His stomach is in knots and all he can think about is himself in Paris for John’s birthday: anxious and afraid of breaking something so special, worried that there were no right moves, and sometimes with John, there weren’t. John goes hot and cold; he’s done it a few times already this evening. It makes Paul always wary of saying or doing the wrong thing and he thinks that love ought to be easy, and --

_ Love _ . He’d never used that word to describe the thing between him and John, not even in his own head. It makes something wash over him and something deep inside of him tells him that it’s fear. He’s  _ afraid _ . He’s already looped himself into a group of men that John’s kissed, he doesn’t want to think about what it all means if he’s a man that John loves and that loves John back. 

“The room’s gonna start spinning in a minute,” John finally says for him and Paul hears himself breathe a sigh of relief. He hates that he has because it must mean that John’s heard it too. John rolls away from him, onto his back and Paul hates to see him go. He hates that he doesn’t  _ know _ what he wants. “I’ve got to shut my eyes.”

“Yeah,” Paul hums in agreement and has to actively hold himself back from shifting closer to John. So, instead he shuts his eyes to it all. He thinks the room  _ is _ spinning, but it isn’t because he’s had too much to drink.

He tosses and turns, falls in and out of sleep. He doesn’t know how late it must be, but he becomes distinctly aware of the feeling of a mind running rampant next to him. In the dark, he rolls onto his side and peers through the dwindled moonlight at John. He’s there with his back to Paul, but Paul knows he’s awake and he’s as sure of it as if John were looking directly at him, eyes wide and conscious. He shifts closer and John goes still, like he’s holding his breath. 

“John?” Paul whispers as the space between them continues to shrink. “You awake, John, love?”

There’s a moment where Paul thinks that John just might ignore him, but then the mattress groans under him as John rolls onto his back. He must realize just how close Paul’s shifted, because he doesn’t continue onto his side. He stays where he is, flat on his back, keeping as much space between them as he can, but Paul can tell he doesn’t want to. He shakes with how much he wants them to be touching. 

“Yeah,” he admits, as if Paul couldn’t have already known. 

“You always think this much in bed?” Paul asks, his tone soft and apologetic. He hopes John sees it for what it is: a peace offering.

Then, John chuckles and Paul knows he has. John manages to glance at Paul, just for a second, before his eyes are back down at his hands, clasped together over his chest. “You want a diplomatic answer?” he asks. “Or do you want the truth?”

There’s that word again:  _ truth _ . Paul would want the truth out of John as often as John was willing to give it. “I do some of my best thinking in bed,” Paul says, by way of an answer, because he realizes that if it’s the truth he wants with John Lennon, he has to offer some truth of his own. 

John looks at him again, and Paul wonders what he must look like to him. In darkness, without glasses, he thinks he must be quite soft. But, he supposes, it was always John who was rough around the edges anyway. Except when he isn’t. Except when there are soft words or soft hands to melt into. John’s eyes are on him and there are two versions of him, always. Something strong and brash to cover up something abandoned. Paul thinks he ought to like one version more than the other, but right now, he sees both of them. He sees John, hardened and on the defensive, and John, yearning for something a little more than the weight of a warm body next to him, and he loves them both. 

“I do some of my worst,” John counters. He says it with a wry grin, but he isn’t joking around. 

Paul edges closer still and he thinks his senses must be upped since it’s so dark around him because he swears he can hear John inhale sharply, like he’s just been given something he never thought he’d have. But it isn’t everything. So, Paul reaches out to touch John’s cheek experimentally, sees what that might do, and it makes John close his eyes, makes him swallow down whatever he might have said next, so Paul aborts; he lets his hand fall down to John’s shoulder where a white feather’s found home after being squeezed out of the down pillow beneath his head. 

John opens his eyes and sees Paul gracefully drop the feather down on the comforter between them and Paul sees him get embarrassed all over again. He’d been expecting more; Paul realizes that he’d been  _ hoping _ for more, and that’s what has made him feel foolish and ashamed more than anything in his life: hope. 

“That’s because you go overboard,” Paul tells him and he lets his hand rest down on John’s bicep as though that was what he meant to do all along. He pretends he doesn’t notice it when John shifts closer to him, pressing his skin up into Paul’s touch. “You think too much, John. You always have.”

John rolls his eyes, but offers a smile. “Better to think too much than say too much.”

“You do that --”

“I do that, too, I know,” John finishes for him, shaking his head at himself ruefully. 

Then, his eyes go a bit distant and Paul hears John’s voice in his head:  _ is there anything about me I like? _ And Paul realizes that nothing is coming to mind and he can’t just lie here, letting John think that way. So, he rubs his hand up and down John’s arm, waiting for John to look at him, but he won’t. “Hey,” Paul tries. He presses his fingers into John’s elbow and says again: “hey,” and that’s enough for John to look his way. “You can tell me what you’re thinking about,” Paul offers. “That’s what makes us work.” 

“We work because I only tell you what you want to hear,” John says back, and Paul knows it's the insecurity talking, but it still makes him bristle. He pulls his hand away from John’s arm and feels the way John already misses it. He decides that he’ll put it back if John has the right response to: “That’s shite and you know it.” He holds his breath and waits. He watches John ruminate on that, but they both know he doesn’t need to: the honesty of it is stark and obvious, even in the middle of the night. So John just shrugs plaintively and Paul thinks, if he didn’t know John was only dismissing himself, that the gesture would make him angry. 

“Most of what I say is shite,” John allows. “Why do you put up with it?”

Paul sighs and distantly wonders if they’ll ever fall back to sleep tonight. “Because you’re my  _ friend _ ,” he says, and he knows it’s the wrong thing to have said as soon as the word leaves his mouth. “Because I care about you,” he amends, but John’s already speaking over him: “Right,” he says bitterly. “Your friend you play house with.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Paul asks petulantly.

“You tell me, Paul,” John pokes back, but he wires his mouth shut as Paul says: “Because I’m not  _ playing _ anything,” in tandem. 

“Then what are you doing?” John asks. He shifts onto his side to look directly at Paul. “What are  _ we _ doing?”

“I don’t know, John --”

“Because I reckon I’d be with you if --...” He suddenly looks away and Paul can’t take it. 

“If  _ what _ ?” he demands. 

John goes red and Paul realizes they both must still be drunk, otherwise they wouldn’t be saying any of this. “If you were a girl. If people would allow it. If you wanted --”

“You were with Brian, weren’t you?” Paul cuts him off because he can’t hear what John thinks is the fundamental truth: that he doesn’t want John back. It makes him feel sick that he’d waited so long to kiss John again after Paris, that he’d let John feel this way for so long that it started to become his truth. There had never been anything that Paul had wanted more: he’d always wanted John Lennon in his life, he’d always wanted to keep the thing between them safe and bright and it had all nearly cracked, just because he’d been afraid to tell John that he liked the way it felt when he kissed him. 

“Yeah,” John allows, because he realizes what Paul is telling him: it doesn’t matter that they’re both men, it doesn’t matter that they could be given prison labour for the things they want to do to one another. Then, he swallows hard because he knows that Paul had heard and understood his last reservation, even if he hadn’t been able to finish saying it:  _ if you wanted me back. _ Paul watches his eyes start to go a bit wide and his lips part in the sofest sigh; Paul watches him realize that that doesn’t matter either. Whether or not John’s head is telling him Paul doesn’t want him back doesn’t matter because the real Paul is here, tangible and loving, right in front of him, telling him that that’s not true. 

Paul suddenly wonders if telling him is even enough. So, instead of trying to bat it into John’s head, he reaches out, touches his hand to John’s cheek and kisses him. It takes a moment for John to kiss him back, like he can’t quite believe it’s happening. But when he does, when he allows himself to exist in this moment, Paul feels them become one person. He rolls himself onto John’s lap, only allowing them enough space to breathe, before kissing him again. He feels John’s hands clinging to his undershirt, like there was still a chance of this ending before he wants it to. 

Before Paul can really think about where this will go, he feels John’s fingers up the back of his shirt, tugging at the hem of it, hoping to pull it up and over his head. There’s cotton between them, just for a moment, then John pulls Paul back down to kiss him, letting his hands run through his hair. 

He sighs, then sits up to let Paul help with his own shirt. As soon as they’re skin-on-skin, John’s voice goes softer. “I never thought we’d do something like this again,” he says, craning his neck to open up his throat for more of Paul’s kisses. He’s thinking of Paris, the way it had felt to be in bed with one another. 

“Why not?” Paul breathes against him. 

“Because I didn’t think you were like me,” John answers easily. 

He’s flushed and thinking too fast, struggling to keep John held together, like he’s shovelling water with just his hands, so he doesn’t understand what John means, doesn’t understand that he means something serious. The way they’re breathing against one another, it doesn’t allow room for any sort of critical thinking, so Paul asks: “Not like you?”

John suddenly goes stiff with nerves beneath him. He hadn’t been expecting to explain to himself. He peers up at Paul and even in the middle of the night, Paul can see the way his cheeks have gone bright red. He licks his lips nervously and Paul knows he should say something else -- he should know what John means, but he just feels blank. With his knees on either side of John, with his hands in John’s hair, he’s just blank. There’s nothing other than the boy in front of him. 

“I mean,” John starts shakily. “It’s always me starting this. I went on that vacation with Brian.” Paul feels himself shake his head, and it isn’t because he still doesn’t understand. He just doesn’t want to hear it. He’s afraid that whatever comes next will frighten him out of this confidence they’ve been able to build with one another. Alone in their flat in London, they could be anything, as long as they didn’t put a word to it. “A queer, Paul,” John finally says for him, his voice gone slightly harder and terse, as though he’s realized the one word he can use to describe himself is the one word that might make Paul tear this all down. And he might be right. Paul feels himself wince at the word -- he always has, he’s been called it enough, in Liverpool and Hamburg too. It’s a sour word that hangs heavy over him. He can’t even understand how John can  _ say _ it. Five months ago, it was a word that made John put Bob Wooler in the hospital, now he was using it softly, in bed, with another man. “I didn’t think you were queer,” he adds.

“I’m not,” Paul insists, pulling away, putting some space between them. He feels John’s hands down at his thighs, holding them where they are. He’s staying gentle, but there’s something urgent about it. 

“It’s just me, then?” he asks and Paul realizes that’s just as good an answer for him.

So, he nods, and he sees it make John breathe a little easier. It hurts to see someone so strong turn to glass when someone tells them that they’re special. A heavy sort of responsibility falls over him; he’s glad to still have some alcohol in his system that he can blame the oncoming wave of nausea on. 

“I’m me and you’re you,” he tells John. “It just works.”

John nods as if he’s been alone for years and somebody’s just found him. Paul isn’t sure if it’s right, but he’s always had to follow his instincts with John. It was the only way he’d survived with him. He’d never tip-toed around him, he’d always treated him purposefully. He’d fought him when he needed to and kept him close when John needed to. It had always been delicate. John Lennon would always be a complex book and Paul dreaded the day he wouldn’t be able to read him anymore. 

He presses his lips to John’s and instead of keeping his knees on either side of John’s body, he decides to hitch one of John’s legs upward, giving himself the space to needle himself between them. He keeps them locked in a kiss, hoping he can avoid the moment that John raps him on the knuckles, tells him he’s gone too far, but John doesn’t. He lets Paul maneuver their bodies to his liking and it makes Paul wonder if he’d been this way with Brian too. 

Paul suddenly realizes that he’s in charge, but he doesn’t know what to do. He’s glad that John’s too pleased to notice. He pulls away, just for a moment, and looks down at John, who opens up his eyes and takes a deep breath. He looks exhausted, like a man long-away from home finally back in his own bed, and Paul realizes that this is enough. Paul touching him and kissing him, that was enough. They didn’t have to go any further. Paul smiles down at him, his nerves going away the longer they keep their eyes on one another. 

He reaches out and pushes some of John’s hair off his forehead, cards his fingers through it down to rest at the nape of his neck. He’s never spent a whole night kissing someone without expecting anything else, but he’s always liked to. He nestles himself deeper against John’s chest and kisses him again. It’s something deliberately slow; they’ve got all night. 

Somewhere along the way, Paul rolls himself beside John and falls asleep with his nose buried into the crook of his neck. 

\--

Paul wakes up alone the following morning and assumes that they’ve cracked it. Six years of friendship down the drain for some half-cooked idea of what love really means. 

Then, he sits up and hears John out in the kitchen, whistling Buddy Holly, and he sounds too comfortable, too relaxed, for Paul to have woken up feeling this worried. 

Smiling, Paul climbs out of bed and as soon as he opens his bedroom door, he smells breakfast cooking. He laughs and he isn’t sure why. He picks up the pace and nestles himself against the wooden door jamb into the kitchen. He watches the back of John’s head bob along to the tune in his head, putting some extra butter on some toast. There are some eggs and sausages already laid out on the kitchen table. They don’t look half-bad. Paul crosses his arms over his chest and smiles wider. 

“You reckon any of this is safe for me to eat?” Paul asks. Startled, John looks over his shoulder at him, then breaks out into a wide grin. 

“I’d give it about fifty-fifty,” he allows. Then, he lifts up the last buttered piece of toast and says: “You can’t die from bad butter. There’s always that.”

Paul laughs and sits down at the table. He forks himself a few sausages and a spoonful of eggs. It smells great now that he’s got it in front of him. John sets down the plate of toast, then there are cups of coffee laid out for them. Paul hasn’t got the heart to tell John that he always burns the coffee beyond recognition. He’ll drink it anyway. 

John sits down opposite him and immediately tries a mouthful of eggs. Paul smiles at the shock on his face -- clearly it’s more edible than he’d been expecting. “You know, I’m not horrible at this ‘playing house’ shite,” he declares. 

Paul laughs and tries a mouthful himself. He can’t find it in himself to disagree, so he nods. “It’ll take me some time to trust your sausage,” he says, stifling a grin. John pauses, looks up at him, and Paul feels himself hold his breath. He raises his eyebrows, hoping against everything he knows, that they might be able to joke about last night. 

Then, John relents. He laughs, and Paul sees a slight blush rise up from his chest. “Jesus Christ, Macca,” he mutters, so Paul laughs too. Then, John sips at his own coffee and winces. “Eugh!” Paul laughs, knowing exactly what’s coming. “Now  _ that _ is terrible!”

“You always burn it,” Paul allows. 

“You can burn a liquid?” John asks sincerely. 

Paul drops his forehead into his hand, and offers a small: “yes.”

“Blimey,” John mutters, clattering the coffee cup back down on the table. “Learn something new with you every day.”

Paul smiles up at him and feels himself go shy. He doesn’t know why exactly. Then, John reaches out for a piece of toast and hands it across the table to him. Paul takes it, their fingers brushing up against one another’s. It’s strangely intimate; sharing food across a dinner table. Paul’s glad that they’re here together. He’s glad that they’ve been able to find one another. 

  
  


**THE END.**


End file.
